A conservative justice has weathered attempts to link him to Wisconsin's governor and a divisive union rights law and won re-election, according to county vote totals finalized Friday.

Tallies from each of the state's 72 counties show Justice David Prosser defeated challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg by 7,316 votes. State election officials said they will wait to declare an official winner until the deadline for Kloppenburg to seek a recount passes. She has until Wednesday to call for one.

If Kloppenburg decides to opt for a "recount" the costs would be paid for by the state, since the canvassed results have her trailing by less than 0.5% statewide. Prosser's margin of victory, according to the currently reported numbers, should they become official, would be just 0.488%.

The official canvassing process in Milwaukee (and, indeed, the bulk of Wisconsin), is little more than a reconciliation of the number of voters who signed into poll books, plus the number of voters who registered at the polls on Election Day, plus any absentee ballots not scanned at the polling place (as in Milwaukee, where absentees are now scanned centrally, instead of at the polling place) plus a few provisional ballots later verified and counted, as matched against the number of votes reportedly cast, according to results tapes printed out by optical-scan computers such as those made by Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia and Populex.

Actual results reported by those computers are not verified by human beings as being accurate during the canvass process. Only the number of ballots cast is reconciled, not the actual votes for each candidate, in general. That, despite the fact that hand-marked paper ballots exist --- and could be counted for accuracy --- for the vast majority of the votes cast across the state on April 5th...

Our original report on the WI Supreme Court race last week --- filed when the margin of difference between the two candidates was reportedly just 204 out of some 1.5 million votes cast, based on machine-reported results --- details a number of concerns about the accuracy of the optical-scan systems used in the state, and their propensity for misreporting election results due to either malfunction or malfeasance.

While Kloppenburg has three business days to request a recount of the race, she would have to receive a court order to have ballots actually counted by hand, as Wisconsin's "recount" provisions [PDF] allow only for a re-scan of paper ballots originally tallied by optical-scanners, as per Wis. Stat. § 5.90(2).

The state's machine "recount" procedures, however, also allow that "Each ballot shall be reviewed by the board of canvassers and may be inspected by the candidates or their representatives before being fed into the machine." So a 'virtual hand-count,' of sorts, could take place whether court-ordered or not, at least as we read the state's rules on this.

The impossible 97.3% turnout of registered voters in the 2004 Waukesha County presidential election neans that we need an analysis of the Wisconsin 2004 and 2008 presidential elections.

Of the 236,642 registered voters in Waukesha, apparently 231,031 voted. That is unheard of turnout.

Richard - Please read my article yesterday investigating that reported 97.63% turnout, as I offered potential reasons for that number being reported as it was. Largely, the "REGISTERED VOTERS" as reported on Kathy Nickolaus' Waukesha County report did not include those who registered at the polls on Election Day as they are allowed to do in WI.

Additional investigation seems to bear out that hypothesis. Not that that means we shouldn't investigate the county's numbers (or, hell, just actually bother to count them!), but there is a feasible explanation for that seemingly impossible "97.63%" reported turnout.

Hmmm - I'll modify my initial comment above. The conservative blogger who claimed to have resolved the 2006 discrepancy is now acknowledging that his analysis is incorrect (i.e. see comments to the linked post).

While she may not have formally announced it, I have no doubt that Joanne Kloppenburg will request, at a minimum, a machine "recount." She has retained the very able Marc Elias, who represented Al Franken during Norm Coleman's protracted legal challenge to the hand count in MN.

One would hope that Elias' first order of business would be to seek a court order mandating actions to protect the chain of custody for a statewide hand count.

I'm not as confident as you are about Kloppenburg asking for that "recount". She's kept her cards pretty close to her vest on this, and hasn't given any indication of her plans during conversations with the campaign. I've been troubled by what the campaign has done (or, more specifically, hasn't done) during the interim of the past week and a half.

That said, even if she asks for one, I can't imagine it'll go as long as Coleman/Franken because much of that count was taken up by bullshit legal maneuvering by Coleman's camp meant simply to eat up the clock and keep Franken out of the U.S. Senate as long as possible.

I can't imagine Kloppenburg (and/or her counsel, Marc Elias) playing that particular game.

Yes --- statewide handcounted recount. Even if Kloppenburg doesn't think she can win, she should be urged to stand up for the truth and go for this.

Here is an opportunity to learn what is going on, in a state where they are lucky enough (or smart enough!) to have something available that actually CAN be recounted.

But even if this 'recount' just reconciles poll books with machines, it may still be useful in terms of building the knowledge base. Here in PA alarming discrepancies showed up in citizen audits done in three large counties, comparing the number of voters who signed the pollbooks to the number of voters the paperless machines said cast ballots.

As far as actual vote totals, even though PA has both a statewide audit law and a mandatory recount law, it's pretty much hopeless because about 85% of our voters are on totally paperless DREs.

But WI has paper to count. It needs to be counted. It's time we got to the bottom of some of this BS.

When you read it, note that some areas say "the GAB recommends that..." and others are headed by citation of Wisconsin election statutes or an EB number, which I think is probably a regulation or administrative rule by the forerunner to the GAB, the Elections Board. I am assuming that the "we recommend" areas are NOT written into state law and thus it is not clear whether they are enforceable and how/by whom. It probably depends on the powers granted to the GAB (what laws, procedures or administrative rules they can enforce).

I see in the manual that candidates involved in a recall can challenge a number of areas:

Both sides must be given the opportunity to object and provide offers of evidence on:
all objections to the recount itself,
the composition of the board of canvassers,
the procedures followed,
any ballot cast at the election, and
any other issues presented to the canvass board during the recount

I would note, for example, that:For state and federal elections, the county boards of canvassers for the counties in which the contested votes are cast conduct the recount.

Election inspectors (aka moderators) and the clerk are members of the canvassing board.

Thus, if there is an underlying questions on the integrity of a particular county clerk, that person and his/her handpicked inspectors and board members do the count, unless a candidate successfuly raises an objection to that party's doing the work. The documentation to be presented for that meeting is one of those "it is recommended" lists.